The Free Clans of Shān
Originating from disgruntled miners cast aside by A.C.R.E., the Five Clans are a hardy bunch, both pragmatic and vicious in their mannerisms. Born of the ice and rock of Shān, the Clans find little solace in their surroundings, with little to no organic life to eat and the very air yielding them no breath. Despite their shared ancestry and hardships, the Clans are anything but amicable, rivaling each other for control of land, tech, and resources. The binding force between the Clans are the efforts of the Rusiyyah, whose raiding and securing of resources help keep Shān alive. These are a brave, yet bitter people, wary of outsiders and those who are not of their own blood. Events On Shān Before The Arrival of House Vagrant 2825 CE A.C.R.E. begins the Montgomery Project, stationing a massive mining vessel in orbit of the planet Shān, in the Hild System. This craft, its attendant vessels, and the thousands of tonnes of cargo it carries, represent a massive investment into the exploitation of Shān’s natural resources. * A.C.R.E. originally purchased mining rights to Shān because of surveys speaking of high concentrations of rich metals in the nearby Souris Belt. Shortly after establishing Montgomery Station over Shān, they also realized the cornucopia of mineral resources on the surface of Shān as well. 2852 CE Temporarily forced planet-side in a routine workforce cycle, various bands of miners strike off into the wilderness of Shān, engaging in such tactics as kidnappings of A.C.R.E. personnel and guerrilla warfare to endure on the icy plains. * A.C.R.E.’s official line was that it was routine workforce cycling, but over the course of months of terrible conditions and no end of being rotated back into the workforce, riots took place, which A.C.R.E. promptly ignored, until the problem went away, either subsiding, starving, or leaving. * The firebrands behind causing these bands to strike out away from A.C.R.E. and make a life for themselves included the progenitors of what would become the Scylfing, Hatagin, and Abbasid Clans. 2911 CE Without a steady food supply, the roving raider clans, once unified in purpose, split decisively. The once soft targets of A.C.R.E. supply depots are put under more stringent guard, and relocated to remote areas, far from the reach of the clans. Some implement policies of pragmatic cannibalism upon the cadavers of their fallen kinsmen, well preserved in the thin, cold atmosphere of Shān, in order to eke out their survival. Others decry such practices as inhuman and immoral. * At this point, the Clans have been established. There are Four: ** Abbasid ** Breuni ** Hatagin ** Scylfing * While they have separated into differing Clans which bicker at times, they are all united under the purpose of survival, and an enmity of A.C.R.E. All but Breuni begin to resort to cannibalism. Breuni - vehemently opposed to it - begin to become more nomadic in nature, following the ever shifting and distant A.C.R.E. camps on the surface. 2930 - 2940 CE The practice of cannibalism among the clans shifts from a necessity to an ingrained way of life on the surface. Raids on A.C.R.E. depots now take both supplies and people into the icy night. * Breuni is the only Clan not heavily reliant on cannibalism during this point. * Catalysts that drive the other Clans to this extreme: ** The tunnels and safe spots of Clan Scylfing are located, and they are driven out, losing what they had gained. ** Hatagin suffers from a wasting sickness, causing many of their Clan to die off - allowing those that live to feast. This disease affects the Clans to this day, though much it is much less common. ** Abbasid begin to suffer ever greater casualties whenever they go out to raid an A.C.R.E. supply camp as they have begun to be guarded and become too costly to attack. 2940 CE As the population of the raider clans plummets at an unprecedented rate, it is decided reform needs to be brought about to cease cannibalistic activity on Shān. In a ten week-long war among the clans, brother fights brother, and entire lineages are erased from history. This conflict, known as the Bone War, is the chiefest reason many view the people of Shān as prolific cannibals. * Several events trigger what leads up to the Bone War: ** A joint effort to create a self-sustainable settlement that would see an end to the Clans being reliant on raiding A.C.R.E. supplies. The Clans each send a small contingent of their youths to form a new Clan. ** Several months pass before Breuni come across their settlement, finding the site of a massacre - so much blood that the ice had turned to red water. In what has since been dubbed the Battle of Red Waters, the Breuni originally believed that A.C.R.E. had found the settlement and destroyed it. ** A Hatagin hunting camp located nearby showed that it had been the Hatagin that had completely destroyed the joint hope of the Clans, and saw no wrong done in this. ** Breuni then sends word to Scylfing and Abbasid with this news. The four decide that Hatagin has lost its grip on humanity as well as that their numbers have swollen, overshadowing the combined forces of the other Three. ** For the Good of Shān, the Three join forces to destroy Hatagin. 2942 CE Clan Scylfing, wounded from their grievous losses due to the Bone War, devise a plan to seize the Salum, an ACRE-held bulk freighter in orbit of Shān. The acquisition of this vessel freed the Scylfing from absolute reliance on planetside supply depots, and allowed them to enact raids on such nearby worlds as Cabina, Hallger, and Argiast. After nearly losing the Salum to the fiends of Al-Dost, it was determined that it would be safer to avoid the Bergunn system in its entirety. * This results in Scylfing becoming less reliant on what supplies are available to them on Shān from A.C.R.E. * While not a combat capable ship in its own right, they are able to embark on a crusade of planetary raids against other nearby worlds. * The fateful Disaster at Al-Dost would not occur for nearly 150 years from this beginning step. 2946 CE As the deeds of the Salum and her crew grew in strength, it was decided to split the forces of the Scylfing into a new Clan, the Yngling. These spacefarers would form the basis of the Rusiyyah, striking out to other planets to acquire supplies for their fellows, while the remaining Scylfing Clansfolk would work towards a stable Shān. This was seen as a grievous loss to the strength of the Clan Scylfing, since it was exceedingly rare for those first among the Rusiyyah to ever truly return to Shān. * The term Rusiyyah is first coined by an Abbasid who hears of Yngling. It was a term first used to describe a Scylfing that left the Clan to join the Ynglings in their quest to raid and bring back supplies to Shān. It also implied a sense of Loss for the Scylfing Clan, as numbers would remain low due to the Bone Wars and Great Raid for some time, thus impeding their own attempts - while remaining necessary. * It is at this point, after several successful small raids on Argiast and Hallger, that the crew of the Salum rechristen their ship The Drunken Slattern. 3041 CE The introduction of a synthetic workforce into the struggling Montgomery Project managed to finally cause an uptick in the profits from the mining expedition. With no need for non-synthetics on the surface anymore, A.C.R.E. terminated the contracts of all human workers on Shān and largely retracted administrative oversight of Montgomery, finally achieving their goal of a mostly autonomous extraction project. The stranded workers, furious and betrayed, were either absorbed into the Clans, struck out on their own, or died on the icy flats of Shān. * Scylfing leave their tunnels and begin construction on what they refer to as The Holt. Their desire is to create a great fortress that they might never be driven from again. * After a self-imposed exile of some 95 years, Yngling is finally able to return to Shān in numbers again. This event is celebrated yearly, known simply as The Reunion. * Before this happened, small smuggling ships were the best - and usually only - way to ferry raided goods back to the surface. 3180 CE With the War Against the Artificials beginning in earnest, Montgomery Station is left in orbit of Shān undermanned and vulnerable. Though the price is still unknown, the Clan Abbasid bribed Clan Yngling to strike Montgomery Station out of the sky, disabling her stabilizing thrusters and plunging her towards the surface. This “controlled” crash smashed the massive station into the side of a massive mountain, which had been previously selected as the crash site due to the abundance of natural cave systems within it. In mere hours, the Clan Abbasid had descended on the still flaming wreckage to claim their new home, and establish what would one day become New Montgomery. The Clans of Modern Day Shān Though they began as bands of guerrilla fighters raiding A.C.R.E. supply depots, the Clans shifted irrevocably due to their relative isolation from the powers of the sector. It was at the point the proto-Clans became self sustainable that they stopped fighting for mere survival and began vying for power with their neighbors, their ceaseless struggles against one another forging new identities out of ice and blood. Abbasid - The Clan That Rose Staking a claim to New Montgomery let the Abbasid Clan absorb many of the displaced workers, and gave them much in the way of wealth to trade and barter with. While no longer the sole owners of New Montgomery, Abbasid controls the greatest singular portion still, and has the biggest say of how things are done there. Breuni '- ''The Clan That Wanders The Breuni are the only Clan that can claim - and pridefully boast - that they have never succumbed to cannibalism. This, plus the fact that they also wander the surface of Shān to this day, may help explain why Breuni has ever remained only a middling sized Clan. The Breuni began their nomadic life following the ever shifting A.C.R.E. supply caches, but they have evolved to being the natural rangers of Shān. They harvest oxygen from icefields, continue to reap supplies on the surface, cataloguing all that they find. '''Hatagin - The Clan That Bled Devastated with losses after the Bone Wars, Hatagin has begun to recover - slowly. Still refusing to stop what they see as their birthright in cannibalism, they have become somewhat reclusive and insular. Opinion among the millions of refugees and displaced workers sees them as bestial lepers, and they have been driven from the public eye. Scylfing - The Clan That Stayed After A.C.R.E. left Scylfing began construction on The Holt, and that construction continues to this day, though it has already become an impressive fortress. Leading the way for the other Clans, they have made marked improvements to daily life, creating many smaller communities in the surrounding areas of The Holt which have already reached a point of self-sufficiency. Yngling - The Clan That Left Once the split with Scylfing occurred, it would be 95 years before the Yngling Clan would step foot on Shān as one group, again. During this time they began to hone their craft as space raiders and pirates, becoming a fearsome force to be thought of with dread by the inhabitants of nearby systems. While not as bright a note as their victories, they also suffered many defeats in this time, coming close to extinction more than once, which resulted in scattering a slew of asteroid and moon fortresses from which they might limp back to and defend, or hide and recover in. **It should be noted that while it was never officially made into a separate Clan - in fact, it never even earned a name - the joint group of Clansfolk that was the catalyst for The Bone Wars is ever considered in the back of Clan minds as The Clan That Was Lost. To this day the site of the Battle of Red Waters is considered a sacred place and taboo ground. None are allowed to build within a day’s travel of the location, it is considered neutral territory, and no blood is ever to be shed there again. This can make things difficult when some group of refugees or displaced workers attempts to build a new settlement in the area, resulting in the Clans gathering together and dragging them off the territory before summarily executing them. Daily Life on Shān for Clans CONSTRUCTIONCategory:Shān Category:Vagrant Category:Rusiyyah